While Tuesday felt like a typical spring day, just 24 hours later Old Man Winter showed who is still in charge of the weather in Highland County.
The scene Tuesday in downtown Hillsboro displayed a clear blue sky, warm and gusty south-westerly winds and a high temperature, according to the Merchants National Bank thermometer, of 60 degrees.
That same scene Wednesday showed the same downtown Hillsboro location, but with gray and cloudy skies, brief snow flurries, a cold wind that howled more from the north, and a temperature reading of just 27 degrees.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Chris Hogue told The Times-Gazette it’s going to be more of the same for the next seven days, with a chance for perhaps a couple of inches of snow this weekend.
“Yesterday we were about 20 degrees above normal and now we have a return to reality with a pretty big cold front moving through,” he said. “We call them ‘non-diurnal temperatures,’ because the high occurs at night and then we get the low temperature later during the same day.”
Hogue says the weather models at the National Weather Service near Wilmington are predicting the cold air is going to be firmly in place for the next seven days, which is the prediction window length for meteorologists like himself.
And this weekend that cold could be accompanied by snow.
“We’re looking at a storm path across the Ohio Valley that could produce accumulating snow for this weekend,” Hogue said. “Our models are forecasting it could hit us late Friday night through all day Saturday, tapering off by Sunday morning.”
As to snowfall totals, he said he didn’t want to go out on a limb and make a prediction since the storm system in question is still distant, and won’t be in the Mississippi Valley until Thursday.
The WLWT-TV 10-day forecast is calling for temperatures to return to the low 40s by the middle of next week.
Reach Tim Colliver at 937-402-2571.
